Update: AAPL blew away expectations.
At 4.30pm Eastern, Apple will report its Q2 results (and we’ll be covering it live). It’s the day when the last three months of analyst predictions and forecasts come home to roost.
Apple’s newly-realistic guidance revenue is $41b to $43b, with margins of 37.5 – 38.5 percent. These numbers would suggest earnings per share of just over $10 …
Yahoo Finance has averages for over 40 analysts, and is predicting revenue of $42.59b, towards the upper end of Apple’s guidance, and earnings per share of $10.07:
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has put together a comparison table of what he thinks the ‘buy side’ (the mutual funds, pension funds and insurance companies who buy stock in large volume) expects compare to ‘the Street’ (the investment bankers and analysts).
Fortune, as per always, has the full analyst rundown:
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It’s the analyst predictions that tend to have the bigger effect on the share price, so if Apple hits these numbers, the share price will likely rise; if Apple falls short, then the share price probably falls. So, the key numbers Apple has to hit, starting with sales:
And financials:
iPad: 18.3 million
Mac: 4.1 million
iPod: 6.25 million
The market will also be listening closely to Apple’s guidance for the following quarter (Apple’s expectations of it’s numbers for April to June). The numbers the market expects to hear are:
Gross margin: 38.5%
EPS: $9.98
Come back after the bell as we cover the earnings report and analyst call live.
June quarter gross margin: 38.6%
June quarter EPS: $8.97
